Monday, July 21, 2014

Margaret
Wente dismisses the reported decline in honey
bee populations with this un-sourced claim:“In spite of some unusually high local die-offs,
the overall bee population doesn’t actually seem to be falling. The United
States has more honeybee colonies than it did in 2006”.

It’s usually “opposite
day” in Ms. Wente’s corner of The Globe, but when you have a revelation like
this you’d think readers would be told where the information comes from.Here’s a taste of how the story has been
reported up til now (emphasis mine):

Fox
News:“A new federal report blames a combination of problems for
a mysterious and dramatic disappearance of U.S. honeybees since 2006”.

IPS
News:Since 2006, the U.S.
government estimates that 10 million bee hives have succumbed in the United
States alone.

The
Guardian:A report by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency on “the disappearance of
America's honeybees”, blamed a parasitic mite, viruses, bacteria, poor
nutrition and genetics as well as pesticides for the rapid decline of honey bees since 2006.

The
Washington Post:“In the United States, domesticated bee populations
have reached a 50-year low and keep dwindling”.

Phys.org:“A new U.S. report blames a
combination of problems for a mysterious and dramatic disappearance of
honeybees across the country since
2006”.

Wired:“Nearly one in three commercial
honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an
unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply….. The losses are in keeping with rates
documented since 2006…”.

National
Geographic: “The latest data, from the 2012-2013 winter, indicate an average loss of 45.1 percent of
hives across all U.S. beekeepers, up 78.2 percent from the previous winter, and
a total loss of 31.1 percent of commercial hives, on par with the last six
years. (Most keepers now consider a 15 percent loss ‘acceptable.’).”

Time: “Since 2006 an estimated 10
million beehives worth about $200 each have been lost, costing beekeepers some
$2 billion”.

“ Since 2006, North American migratory
beekeepers have seen an annual 30 percent to 90 percent loss in their colonies;
non-migratory beekeepers noted an annual loss of over 50 percent.”

So while there have
been annual fluctuations in yearly numbers before and since 2006, the doubling
or tripling of honeybee deaths first noted around that time continues more or
less, with 2013 rates almost identical to 2006. More importantly, its cause is not yet fully
understood.But that’s no reason to
shrug and say it’s not happening.

To her
claims about U.S. bees, Wente adds these similarly vague and un-sourced Canadian
numbers: “In
Canada, the number of bee colonies fell a bit between 2012 and 2013, but was
still way up from what it was in 2009… And in Western Canada, where most of the
honey comes from canola and most of the canola is treated with neonics, the
bees are fine.”

So here
are some actual figures:The Canadian
Association of Professional Apiculturists reports average Canadian colony loss in
2009 at 34.2%.(Earlier losses were around 10%, Replacement
rate 15%).In 2012/2013 deaths averaged 28.6% - still “double
the acceptable level”, CAPA says.It’s ridiculous to claim, as Wente does, that
a small rebound from a 34% loss to an equally unsustainable 29% - “double the
acceptable level”, means numbers are “way up”.

And directly contradicting
Wente’s (again un-sourced and unsupported) claim that bees are doing just
“fine” in Western Canada, two prairie provinces in fact led the country in bee
deaths in both those years.The CAPA
reports show that Manitoba recorded the highest bee colony loss at 46.4% in
2012/2013, and Alberta topped the chart in 2009 at 44%.

Like the
U.S. example, Wente provides no sources for her claim that our bees are “fine”.
It’s worth remembering that The
Ontario Press Council guidelines state that even in opinion, readers have the
right to know the origin of statistics on which a writer’s views are based.

It’s sad
to see the Globe and Mail’s already ragged reputation continue its own slow
death - aided by an apparent sloppiness virus.While good journalists die off, Wente remains one of the highest paid.And it’s clear she’s not a very busy bee.
Because instead of gathering information from a variety of relevant, expert
sources, and providing it to readers (along with the nectar of her opinion),
she relies entirely on unsupported, inaccurate figures, and one quote – from her
husband.Instead of experts, Globe
readers are treated to the anecdotal assurances (real or fanciful) from Wente
and her hobby/beekeeper/hubby.Unlike
professional beekeepers and farmers, they can afford to replace a queen or two without
putting a dent in their next vacation to Tuscany or Africa.

The loss
of pollinators is an important global issue with a lot of yet unanswered
questions.So would it really have been too
much to expect Ms. Wente to actually interview someone - an entomologist, or a representative of an
association like CAPA - professional bee keepers, whose actual livelihood is on
the line (along with sustainable agriculture)?

That is what
she’s paid to do. A salary
that affords a country retreat from which to enjoy bees and butterflies is no
reason to limit investigation to one’s own backyard.

In the
same article, Wente assures us that reports of Monarch Butterfly deaths are
just so much meaningless buzz.She saw
one in her own meadow the other day (though she acknowledges there may be a wee
bit of a problem with their habitat across the rest of North America). Also, the loss of the milkweed plant on which
the insects breed and feed is the fault of environmentalists’ support for
ethanol, she suggests.Leaving aside the
fact that environmentalists don’t
promote ethanol, Wente, a regular GMO champion, withholds from readers the well
reported links between the disappearance of Monarch milkweed habitat and GMO plantings.

As The New York Timesexplains: “farmers
have switched in droves to new varieties of crops that are genetically
engineered to tolerate the most widely used weed killer in the United States.
The resulting use of weed killers has wiped out much of the milkweed that once
grew between crop rows and on buffer strips separating fields and roads”.

Or here:“Genetically engineered corn and
soybeans make it easy for farmers to eradicate weeds, including the long-lived
and unruly milkweed.Between 1999 and
2010, the same period in which GMO crops became the norm for farmers, the
number of monarch eggs declined by an estimated 81 percent across the Midwest,
the researchers say. That's because milkweed -- the host plant for the eggs and
caterpillars produced by one of one of the most gaudy and widely recognized of
all North American butterflies -- has nearly disappeared from farm fields, they
found.It is one of the clearest
examples yet of unintended consequences from the widespread use of genetically
modified seeds, said John Pleasants, a monarch researcher from Iowa State in
Ames, Iowa”.

Slate: “For monarchs, the most important development was
Roundup Ready corn and soybeans.Since the turn of the century, these genetically
modified crops have risen to dominance in the Midwest. Designed to withstand
dousing from the Monsanto company’s Roundup weed killer, the plants enabled
farmers to swiftly kill competing weeds, including milkweed, while leaving
their crops untouched. In 2013, 83 percent of all corn and 93 percent of soybeans in the United States were
herbicide tolerant, totaling nearly 155 million acres, much of it in the
Midwest”.

The Globe and Mail:The evidence points to the U.S. corn belt,
where increased cultivation of genetically modified corn and soybean crops
comes with a devastating side effect for milkweed.

When
GM crops are planted, fields are sprayed with herbicides to wipe out any wild
plants that don`t share the crops’ genetically engineered protection. In the
past, herbicides would typically be applied early in the growing season, when
milkweed seeds are still underground. With GM crops, the spraying happens
later, and any milkweed growing adjacent to the crops is hit hard.

GMO – both
corn and soy - are planted in
approximately equal amounts in the U.S.Of that half, 27% of the corn goes to ethanol.The disappearing Monarchs have nothing to do
with the destination of a small portion of one crop, and everything to do with the
nature of GMO crops of various kinds and their related pesticide use.Given Wente’s regular trumpeting of GMO, one
is entitled to wonder whether the omission here is intentional or accidental.Ironically, it was an article
promoting GMO (along with a similar lack of ‘busyness’ or work ethic) that got
Wente into plagiarism trouble a while ago – see here.

A few
weeks back, Wente stirred up a hornet’s nest with a silly column on why women don’t watch sports,
can’t do sports and should just make the popcorn for the guys. It was the kind of just-for-clicks stuff she
churns out pretty regularly.There too
she quotes that all round expert - her husband.

I don’t
particularly care how many anecdotal conversations (real or imaginary) with hubby or girlfriend Ms. Wente stuffs into those predictable, contrarian gender/lifestyle pieces.But when writing about serious, real world
topics (science, politics, economics), some serious real world investigation is
called for. Imaginary
people,
friends, and relatives just don’t cut it.Readers of The Globe and Mail deserve facts, sources, real
expertise and accurate statistics.With
that hefty subscription, one should expect Ms. Wente’s article on the
un-explained die off of pollinators and Monarch Butterflies to include just
a bit of legwork on her part - slightly farther afield than the comfy confines
of her country house and garden.Until
then, there are more than a few readers who would like to see an old queen
replaced with one willing to do the job.

Update:A new report
on bee deaths quoting: “More than half of Ontario’s honeybees died last winter”.58%. Again – Margaret Wente could not be bothered
to interview someone from CAPA, who were releasing a report just as she
prepared an article quoting…her husband.